One has always to write these letters for the future. Right now I am beginning this letter on February 14, 2000, but it won't be printed until March or April, so the news is bound to be somewhat dated by the time this issue of the Mount Angel Letter arrives at your home. But we are all dated anyway and so perhaps that is not so important. The important thing is that we "touch base" in each others lives.

What I mostly remember about February l4th is that it is Valentine's day. When I was growing up back in the 1930's in school we kids used to make valentine boxes out of saltine cracker boxes. The boxes in school would all be covered with colored paper and there was a slit in the lid through which you would put your various valentines to those you chose to give them.

This was a nice custom, but it tended to be a popularity contest. Those most popular and attractive would receive the most valetines. Those who were more ordinary and less attractive would receive fewer, or perhaps, none at all. The whole affair tended to be a time of ecstasy for the attractive and of agony for those less favored.

Isn't life itself like this? Life is full of agonies and ecstasies - even for the fortunate. Jesus did say, " If you would be my disciple you must take up your cross and follow me." So the cross is a part of life. We are now moving into Lent when in a particular way we remember the importance of the cross. I am a convert who began to be interested in the Catholic Church when I was l9. A boyhood friend who knew I had been baptized a Catholic as an infant, but who also knew that I had not been raised in the Church invited me at age 19 to go to Mass wit him. If he hadn't done that perhaps I would not have found Catholicism. I had been raised Christian in a Protestant church, but had dropped out of that at about the age of 15, something relatively common with kids, not only when I was young, but today too.

I was not connected much with Christianity from age l5 to l9, but I always felt I should be. When my friend invited me to become reconnected I was eager to try to do so because I knew I was baptized a Catholic. So I went with him and loved it. In my family my father was the Catholic, but for reasons of his own, he hadn't gone to church since he was 20. So he didn't raise me in the Church. But when I was invited by this friend I had the opportunity to experience the Church. And by the time I was 20 I made the personal choice to ask for entrance in the Church.

I never held it against my father who didn't raise me Catholic because he was a great father. He had a problem with religious practice, but that didn't keep him from being a great father. He loved me and supported me, and sometimes cajoled me. He wouldn't let me join any other church and he himself wouldn't eat meat on Friday. He was a loving example to me as the man who as a father gave me life.

And I shouldn't forget to mention my mother. She was also a great woman. She was a good Presbyterian woman, who, when I came into the Catholic Church, supported me. So life perhaps is more about support and love than it is about anything else. If anyone had parents who supported and loved them, it was me.

When at the age of 26 I decided to go into the seminary my dad wasn't so happy. I was the only son, and I am sure he wanted someone to carry on the family name. My mother did support me a little better. But no one could say I wasn't free to make my own decisions. When my father found out that I was going to be able to be well educated, he capitulated. He valued education highly.

So Valentine's Day, even today, reminds me of the love I was given from the beginning of my life - a love that was supportive, if not always agreeing, a love that was consistent, if not always comfortable, a love that basically was real and lasting.

I hope we can all learn to show to each other a love that is real and lasting. We must love life, be positive, and look for the deeper realities. Human beings so often go on appearances. God said, "you people judge by appearances, God judges by the heart."

Love and prayers,